Thursday, January 10, 2008

Noooo! John Kerry!

This seems pretty typical of too much of the "analysis" (Chris Cillizza and a few others are much better) I've seen this morning on John Kerry's endorsement of Barack Obama.

If I were the Obama folks I'd be a bit nervous to see John Kerry surfing into the picture with an endorsement, given how it worked out the last time a former Democratic nominee stepped in to back someone in the primary.

That's it? Because four years ago the previous Dem nominee endorsed Howard Dean Obama should be nervous this time?

Look, there are more variables than anyone can count in politics, and there is no evidence I can discern that there's any substantive connection between the two endorsements mentioned. Obama and Dean are different candidates; Democrats as a whole never saw Dean as electable, while in New Hampshire voters saw Obama as more electable than Clinton. The 2004 and 2008 electoral landscape is different, Kerry and Gore are different...heck, even Gore 2004 and Gore 2008 are different. Let's get a little more rigorous here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People should read this.